Cardiac Nursing

Hello,
I'm in my last semester in the RN program. Right now we are studying cardiac nursing. I'm a little bit anxious and bit nervous about it. Does any of you have any suggestions on how I should study...?I've heard from previous class that they were given a lot of questions about medications (heart). When I study my pharmacology, where should I focus my understanding about a certain drugs? What is the difference between Alpa 1,2 and Beta 1,2...I get so confused about these antagonist/agonist, adrenergic stuff.....Can someone make it simple for me.....Oh, we will also cover respiratory and trauma. Thanks :imbar

Adrenergics are drugs that stimulate or mimic the sympathetic nervous system. An example of an adrenergic is epinephrine (aka adrenaline).

Alpha receptors are found in the Arteries (vascular smooth muscle).

A person has 1 heart...where you will find beta 1's.

A person has 2 lungs...where you will find beta 2's.

If you agonize (agonist) a receptor, it will do more.

Antagonize (antagonist) it and it will do less. (think about this like the word antagonistic, if someone speaks to you in this manner you feel less)

Hemodynamics, electrolytes, acid-base balance, and all that good stuff was the hard part in nursing school. But it was also the best part!

With drugs it's a lot of memorization of what does what. But understanding WHY it's doing what it does is the hardest and most important part. Concentrate on understanding why more than memorizing anything. Except you do need to memorize the alpha/beta, agonist/antagonist stuff above.